Froma Harrop commentary: States, go forth and lead the nation through your example

Also in Opinion

Subscribe to The Dispatch

Already a subscriber?
Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift!
Enroll now.

Saturday January 18, 2014 5:51 AM

In the beginning, Massachusetts opened the gates to same-sex marriage and universal health
coverage. California started to liberalize drug laws by legalizing medical marijuana. The sky didn’t
fall on any of these efforts, initially regarded as dangerous social experiments by many
conservatives.

Now red states such as Kentucky are launching state-run health-insurance exchanges. Federal
judges in conservative Utah and Oklahoma are calling bans on gay marriage unconstitutional. And
purple Colorado has legalized recreational marijuana use.

Most of us have a vision of the way things ought to be. It is human nature to want others to see
the same light we do.

Conservative foes of abortion hold deep convictions that ending a pregnancy is a moral travesty.
Liberals make similar arguments against a health-care system that lets thousands of Americans die
for lack of medical attention, which happens when market forces run the show.

Social activists who live and breathe their cause often seek to impose their views on a diverse
nation. They don’t realize that they can more easily get what they want in states whose culture
shares their views. Showing that a state has enacted their ideas with good effect is the most
expedient way of spreading their ideas coast to coast.

But putting such power in state hands doesn’t always sit well. Liberals, especially, point to
slavery and Jim Crow laws as great evils that flew under the banner of states’ rights. These were
moral outrages that the federal government had to stop, and did.

True, but many less momentous struggles can be more peaceably and efficiently won through
example. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, states can serve as
the “laboratories of democracy.”

Many liberals are enthusing over a bill introduced last month by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal
Vermont independent, and Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington state Democrat, which would create a
national single-payer health-care system.

I happen to think the Sanders-McDermott proposal — actually a modified single-payer plan
allowing private supplemental coverage — is splendid. But it also has zero chance of passage.
Recall how even the modest “public option” — a government plan to compete with the private insurers
— couldn’t get past Congress, including some Democratic members.

The best hope for national single-payer is to let Vermont show that its homegrown version will
work. If Vermont can cut its health-care spending by more than 30 percent under single-payer, as is
projected, other states will copy it, with no pressure needed from Washington.

Gay activists regard laws banning same-sex marriage as a great injustice, and with reason. But
simply waiting for a Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage legal nationwide, no
certainty, would have been a massive waste of time. Marriage is a state responsibility, so what
better place to change the laws than in states open to it?

New Mexico’s Supreme Court just ruled that the ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. In
Virginia, another purple state, the Democratic leaders are going full speed ahead. They are
bolstered by polls showing that 56 percent of Virginians are in favor of same-sex marriage, a
reversal from the 57 percent supporting a ban in 2006. This tide of change would not have rolled in
had liberal states not demonstrated what happens to the broader society when gay couples marry —
very little.

Some states will do things noxious to liberals, for example, on gun control and public financing
for education. Conservatives will dislike decisions made in liberal places. Fine. Let’s all make a
pact to stop trying to make everyone else over in our own image.

Nothing convinces like successful examples. Liberals, above all, should have more confidence in
their own.